Friday, February 04, 2005

The Distortions of Acumen: Liberals Trash Ward Churchill

By Josh Frank

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  1. The author of this article states:
    “To start, Churchill never actually said that WTC workers should be legitimate targets.”

    Actually he has said worse. On his own CD he not only speaks of how they were legitimate, he states that more attacks are necessary. He even encourages a fawning crowd to commit acts of terrorism.

    The author of this article has bought into Churchills fraudulent distortion of what he has said in the past. Churchill is now trying to cover his ass and is being exposed as a liar.
    The author should do his homework better, or perhaps he has and is, like his hero Churchill, not adverse to writing lies to promote his own agenda?

    Posted by Scott Big Bee from Boulder, CO  on  02/05  at  02:10 AM

  2. His “.. little Eichmanns..” comment, in relation to 9/11 victims that got him into the immediate trouble, seems a phrase he tosses around
    loosely - as in the Satya article in relation to yet other groups. http://www.satyamag.com/apr04/churchill.html

    Having rubbished everything about the USA and all people who compromise, note how his fine uncompromising principles allow him to take the
    U.Colorado salary and have recourse to the courts and white man’s law to threaten to sue CU over his breached “rights”.

    The “white man’s law” may in fact be his own law, since there are indications from Native Americans that he is not one of them.

    Mark

    Posted by Mark from New Zealand  on  02/05  at  05:32 AM

  3. The above respondents have not made a case against Churchill besides innuendo.

    If Mr. Scott Big Bee could point to a Ward Churchill quotation in context then his assertions would gain some credence.

    As it stands Churchill has indicated the 9-11 attacks were “ugly” and “hurtful” but that 9-11 did not occur in a vacuum—something progressives should bear in mind.

    Mr. Mark, I wonder how it is that Churchill should protect his rights? He did not implement the system but lives in it—as we all do whether we like it or not.

    This is one of Josh Frank’s best articles. Progressives must also stand vigilant against so-called progressive media and so-called liberal writers.

    Posted by kim from  on  02/05  at  07:28 AM

  4. As Frank, points out, he is a taxpayer to the Empire. 
    So is Churchill. 
    I am, too. 
    As stakeholders, we are still (presumably) free to exercise our right to question, condemn, and actively undermine the policies of war crimes, cultural supremacy, and economic subjugation wielded worldwide by our government.  Only “Good Germans” would religiously fund such atrocities without (at the very least) decrying their very existence.

    Posted by Steve Cone from Four Corners (National Sacrifice Area) USA  on  02/05  at  10:08 AM

  5. Americans are guilt-ridden and would rather point fingers of blame than own up to the fact that the war in Iraq has been a mistake.

    The way and manner in which our so-called ‘leaders’ carry and conduct themselves is shameful.

    They need some serious psychiatric help.

    Posted by MDPB from  on  02/05  at  02:50 PM

  6. To really effect change, Churchill notes in his Satya article, people should “stop being preoccupied with the sanctity of their own personal security… and start figuring out what would be necessary” [People need] “...a fundamental understanding of the nature of their obligation to intervene to bring the kind of atrocities that I’ve described to a halt by whatever means are necessary.”

    His publicity photo in the Satya piece shows a wannabe Weatherman, complete with submachine gun, camo gear, shades, shot against a darkening sky. Image and symbol. An exhortation to the young to follow him, using “whatever means are necessary”?

    Not unlike the preachers in the mosques of Saudi, or London or Bradford exhorting the young to go out and wage holy war.

    Except he is comfortably ensconced in an ivory tower, a poseur ducking and weaving through a hall of mirrors, as his very recent response to criticism makes clear. e.g.

    http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/s11/ward_churchill_responds.html

    If this is mainly a freedom of speech issue, then let’s hear it from Colorado and Hamilton universities inviting Pipes and Horowitz onto campus AND vigorously defending their right to speak.

    Yeah, sure.

    Posted by Mark from  on  02/05  at  03:02 PM

  7. Josh-


    I’ve been getting a ton of emails about my Churchill piece, most of which are guilty of exactly the same kind of wishful thinking you seem to be doing. While it pains me to be on the side of ‘mainstream’ opinion, as it were, I cannot in good conscience come to the defense of the indefensible - namely the endorsement of mass murder. Churchill clearly did endorse the killing of ‘technocrats’ in the WTC for their alleged crimes against the world. He writes:

    If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I’d really be interested in hearing about it.
    [end snip]
    I find it interesting you cut off the paragraph before the last line, where he lays out his conclusion.

    Sure Churchill later said he deplored the attacks, but that is in stark contradiction to the above statements, in tone and clearly in intention. That is why I wrote he backpedaled when he later said the 9/11 attacks were “hurtful.” He’s trying to have it both ways, in my opinion.

    If he was merely trying to state, as Chomsky and others (including myself) have written, that the 9/11 attacks were neither unsurprising considering our foreign policy or unprecedented in the scope of recent human suffering (we leveled a whole neighborhood in Panama and no one noticed) that would be one thing. But he wasn’t. He was making a wholly different point, one that is clearly endorsing the idea that the oppressed have the right and moral authority to attack and kill anyone who takes part in their political and economic subjugation. It’s the same argument that Palestinian suicide bombers use to justify blowing up old Israeli ladies. I know where their pain comes from - I’ve been there and saw it first hand. But that doesn’t make it right, nor does it make it an effective tactic. 9/11 didn’t hurt the American imperialist drive, it only emboldened its most strident champions.

    Don’t even get me started on the fact that he uses the embargo of Iraq as his central crime that the ‘technocrats’ should be held culpable for - when the embargo, like all embargoes, are the work of the government (his employer) and are widely unpopular with the financial community.

    Anthony
    GNN.tv

    Posted by anthony_lappe from  on  02/05  at  03:16 PM

  8. Mark,

    With all due respect, freedom of speech is not about issuing invitations for speakers but protecting the rights of speakers to speak.

    Posted by kim from  on  02/05  at  03:17 PM

  9. From Churchill’s 9/12 article:

    “If the nature of the bombing were not already bad enough ... the death toll [of Iraqi children] has been steadily ratcheted up by US-imposed sanctions for a full decade now. Enforced all the while by a massive military presence and periodic bombing raids, the embargo has greatly impaired the victims’ ability to import the nutrients, medicines and other materials necessary to saving the lives of even their toddlers.”

    Sure, this was written in September 2001, and we all (well, some) have the wisdom of hindsight from the investigations of Claudia Rosett into the UN oil-for-food scams that deprived countless Iraqi children of “nutrients, medicines and other materials”.

    I’ve searched but can nowhere find Churchill withdrawing, modifying or even parsing his sweeping and damning charges. Even some doublespeak would be helpful.

    Could somebody help?

    Posted by Mark from  on  02/05  at  04:22 PM

  10. Anthony - GNN is a great site, though sometimes soft on capitalism, which seems to come out clearly in what you have to say (for my further response to you see my blog http://www.purepolemics.blogdrive.com - hopefully the piece will be put up here at Press Action)

    In regards to your well distributed piece -
    Why was Noam Chomsky “ill timed” on Sept. 12?  Was he ill timexd to the hypersensitive know nothings in America who didn’t feel like context - perhaps mass psychologically understandable but immoral and dangerous and exactly the kind of head-in-the-ground thinking that will lead to further problems?  Or was Chomssky actually ill timed, in that you actually believe that people should not speak their minds. 

    Even if your interpretation is correct, you seem to suggest as much with as much certitude as O’Reilly et. al.  Is it possible that you are wrong?  Even if you are right, moreso, why aren’t you spending more time critiqueing the vast majority of the American academic and media class that justifies far more than the deaths of 3000, but the deaths of millions, torture, etc.

    As someone who edits a website named after “Guerillas,” and claims to be radical, you seem to evoke the attitude of the pure-of-heart liberal, not a “pacifist pussy” as you say - I myself am not one hundred percent pacifist but am very informed by pacifism.  A true pacifist woudl see the logic of Churchill’s statements, twisted, but how violence works.  I suggest you read a little bit of Machiavelli, Marx, Clausewitz or any other historical materialist.  If Churchill seemed to you to be offensive, you should keep your mouth shut, lest you help, not the “mainstream” but the state and agents of repression.  I am not in full agreement with Churchill, but I wouldn’t take the opportunity you took - You seem to want to ingratiate yourself and your website, lest they suspect that you are one of those truly radical dangerous types written about in the New Republic as deserving of torture and accusing your interlocutors of “fascism”

    Real Guerilla stuff, comrade.

    Posted by j cummings from Canada  on  02/05  at  04:49 PM

  11. Isn’t it a hoot watching liberals and progressives fall all over each other scrambling to lap conservatives and right-wing fundamentalists in a mad dash to distance themselves from the most profound political and philosophical questions of our time.  The most vicious attacks are always reserved for those testing their joint taboo on the truth.  This co-dependency of the left & right (conservatives & liberals) is the tainted love that makes the world go ‘round.

    Posted by Steve Cone from 4 Corners (National Sacrifice Area) USA  on  02/05  at  05:11 PM

  12. My reference to Chomsky’s comments being ‘ill-timed’ was that the timing overshadowed the content of what he said. He was literally drowned out. It was a value-natural assessment. Maybe it didn’t come off that way.
    Anyway, as for a pacifist seeing the value in violence against civilians I’m not sure what kind of pacifist that would make you. And if we’re going to talk tactically, I’d argue 9/11 was a disaster for the oppressed peoples of the world - it gave the administration exactly what it wanted, an excuse to launch an endless war for global domination. I’ve read Machiavelli, Marx, Clausewitz. More importantly I’ve read Leo Strauss, and 9/11 was exactly the kind of event he believed was necessary to instill fear into the public and foster a sense of aggressive nationalism. So if we’re talking guerrilla tactics, I’d say 9/11 was one of the worst.

    You don’t agree with C. but won’t take the opportunity I did - why, because you’re too scared?

    Posted by anthony_lappe from  on  02/05  at  05:19 PM

  13. To Lappe,

    What I don’t agree with are specific things (and you’ll find what I spoke of at my site http://www.purepolemics.blogdrive.com,) I don’t think its arguable that you wouldn’t have written that piece about Churchill just out of the blue, that you sused the experience of his being attacked by the right, getting death threats and perhaps having his job on the line, to kick a guy when he’s down.

    I am not afraid to criticize the notion of comparative vs. collective responsibility.  The Straussian hoobajoob is not explanatory - as there are many Straussians who aren’t Straussians (see Anne Norton, Leo Strauss and the politics of Empire), and you yourself see to be using a very “Straussian” techniwue by trying to imply that I was referring to 9/11 as a guerrila tactic. 

    What I was merely referring to as that you use a radical aesthetic, yet you write a piece to legimate yourself among liberals, just at a point that a controversy is taking place, as opposing to realiing that the free speech that you defend - you legitmated “common dreams” readers thinking “well, I’m all for free speech” but that Churchill guy deserved what he got.  I don’t oppose your opinions, but your choice of erring them at this present time.  If that strikes you as authoritarian, then that shows how liberal you are (as Randolph Bourne said, the liberal realist is incapable of taking sides on principle when its inconvenient).

    Posted by j cummings from Canada  on  02/05  at  07:35 PM

  14. A further note to the true word twister Lappe, on second glance of his response to me - did I ever justify violence against civilians?  Where do I do so (or are you just misinterpreting me, which I doubt.) I have been criticized by many people for being too pacifistic. Read my many published works, and you will see that.  I have never once justified any violence, in fact a lot of people think I’m too hard on violence and criticized me for disagreeing with the notion that the left should unquestionably back the Iraqi resistance.  I can only assume I hit a nerve, but that was really dishonest of you....

    Posted by j cummings from Canada  on  02/05  at  07:41 PM

  15. I didn’t mean to twist your words. I guess I just didn’t understand what you meant here: “A true pacifist woudl see the logic of Churchill’s statements, twisted, but how violence works.” The ‘you’ in my reference to pacifist wasn’t referring to you in particular, but any pacifist who “saw the logic” of violence. As for my personal intentions, I definitely wasn’t writing anything to legitmize myself with anyone - it was actually just a spontaneous reaction to the way I was seeing many leftist web sites come to his defense and glossing over what he actually said. It actually sucks to be on the side of ‘mainstream’ media. But I don’t know what else to do other than to express what I think and let the chips fall. There was nothing calculated about it. I spend my about 99% of my time critiquing the mainstream media and the two-party corptocracy we live in, which has included traveling to Iraq to produce a doc and writing a book. BTW your site looks really interesting. If you’re interested I’d be down to have you publish a rebuttal to my piece on GNN, though I’d appreciate it you modified to part about Chomsky, because you totally miss my pt there - I actualy rewrote that so it’s more clear.

    Posted by anthony_lappe from  on  02/05  at  09:01 PM

  16. Anthony - feel free to republish my piece (as found here) minus the sentence about Chomsky.  I take your word that you weren’t pulling some Beinart shit.

    Posted by j cummings from Canada  on  02/05  at  09:42 PM

  17. Could you put together your rebuttal into one cohesive piece, if that’s not too much trouble - and please address what you think he means here:

    If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I’d really be interested in hearing about it.

    It seems pretty clear he is saying 9/11 was not only OK, if not completely necessary…

    Posted by anthony_lappe from  on  02/05  at  10:44 PM

  18. As I said, if you’d like to republish my piece, as a rebuttal, thats fine.  If you’d like me to more specifically rebut your points, I will.  Please communicate with me via e-mail.  But I’m not gonna be baited into condemning something that seems to be taken out of context.

    Posted by j cummings from Canada  on  02/06  at  01:23 AM

  19. The intensity of the mounting hostile reactions to Mr. Churchill only serve to make me ask one question: is your fear that strong to illicit such a malovent response towards the thoughts and opinions of one man?  And if it is, then perhaps you have more to learn from taking a good, hard look at your own fear than from vilifying the person who has awakened it.

    Posted by Nader Rider from  on  02/06  at  02:20 AM

  20. Hi, Nader Rider, the old “when did you stop beating your wife?” trick. Been a while since that one got an airing.

    Let’s be generous and assume the hostility as a given. You equate that with some fear I must have, shake it around, and presto! it turns by alchemy into ‘malevolence’.

    By the exact same reasoning, any candid criticism by Chomsky, Said, Fisk, Pilger, directed at a person (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld - you choose) must denote hostility, fear, and a consequential malevolence. You wouldn’t wear that - and neither do I.  Or are some people simply above criticism?

    Serious question:  what does a person falsely setting himself up as a member of an ethnic minority and thus putting his intellectual honesty in question, as a likely consequence gaining position and tenure, verbally shooting himself in the knee by writing of the 9/11 victims in a way many find deeply offensive - what does such a person have to do to merit some candid criticism without the critic being impugned?

    Perhaps Churchill’s own chickens are simply returning to roost?

    Posted by Mark from  on  02/06  at  03:52 AM

  21. We see “Mark” once again engaging in amoug the greatest hypocracy and mandacity of right wing rhetoric—“racism” from oppressed class.  He accuses Mr. Churchill of “falsely setting himself up as a member of an ethnic minority” and questions his acumen because on that ad-hominum basis.

    This racist attack by “Mark” is the very chicken [shit] that Mr. Churchill accuse American of.

    WB

    Posted by Wilson Barber from  on  02/06  at  04:50 AM

  22. C’mon, guys, this is fish in a rain barrel stuff. At least do your homework.


    Prof’s Indian roots disputed

    By Stuart Steers, Rocky Mountain News
    February 3, 2005

    The United Keetoowah Band Cherokee says University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill is not a member of their tribe.

    “He’s not in the database at all and is not a member of the Keetoowah,” said Georgia Mauldin, the tribal clerk in Tahlequah, Okla.

    In his books and articles, Churchill has described himself as a member of the Keetoowah Cherokee tribe in Oklahoma. In past interviews, he’s claimed to be one-sixteenth Cherokee.

    But the Keetoowah say that’s not true.

    Attempts to contact Churchill for comment Wednesday on his background were unsuccessful. But Churchill’s claim to American Indian roots has been challenged repeatedly by people in that community…

    [Reporter, Mandan-Hidatsa Indian, and former Churchill student Jodi] Rave says she discovered that Churchill had enrolled in the Keetoowah tribe under a program initiated by a former tribal chairman that let almost anyone sign up. She says the Keetoowah later discontinued that program and disenrolled the people who had joined under it.... “

    more at
    http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_3519179,00.html

    Posted by Mark from  on  02/06  at  05:36 AM

  23. #1 - Unless the CD in question is identified, I can’t take your claim seriously.

    #17 - I’m sympathetic to Churchill’s general take on U.S. Empire, but this phrase does seem to be an endorsement of the 911 attacks.  According to my dictionary, “befitting” means “suitable,” “appropriate,” “proper,” and “decent,” so Churchill is saying that the attacks are the only justified response to U.S. foreign policy - unless someone can demonstrate the contrary.  One has every right to argue this, of course, since U.S. targeting policy routinely indulges the mass killing of civilians as mere “collateral damage,” but it is disingenuous to pretend that one has not advocated killing in taking this position.

    Posted by Michael from San Francisco  on  02/06  at  11:19 AM

  24. This is linguistic vulnerability.  If you were so worried as well, why didn’t you just stop listening to the CD?  What about hip hop or country music?  Any chance he was metaphorical?

    I haven’t heard Ward’s CDs but I’m sure he used such words to prove the point that the US uses such a brutal yardstick, not that he himself is using or advocating such a thing.

    Posted by j cummings from Canada  on  02/06  at  12:13 PM

  25. Another note - GNN is sleaze - do they just Smirking Chimp style publish any piece or to people give them perission (I would if I had books to sell)....Anthony has not responded to me, he wanted a nice piece without the embarassment of serious examination of his cred.  Oh, and he travelled to Iraq, yeah....and did a film at Sundance....one that soe people thought was “balanced but still came out with the US looking like it was in a quagmire.” In other words, Anthony is doing all of this for money, not to actually stop wars.  He may be a professional “guerilla” but he has no clue what he’s doing.

    Posted by j cummings from Canada  on  02/06  at  12:18 PM

  26. (Sigh.)

    While I understand, Churchill’s points, the use of the term “little Eichmans” was a bit much for me as a Jew.  I’m also confused by the line he draws between, say, janitors and CEOs.  I work as a clerk myself, and wonder where we “pink collars” would fit into his hierarchy of who had it coming and who didn’t.

    This whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth, too, as a Government employee who has mixed it up with anti-government types over the possible place of hate speech (ie-- Talk Radio) in the Oklahoma City bombings.

    I suspect that a great many liberals and Leftists alike had a premonition long before 9/11 that someone would try --and succeed-- to punish masses of Americans for our leaders’ track record overseas.  They had tried before, after all, and it was obvious to anyone with half a brain what their motivation and/or justification was.  I remember in January 2001 feeling literally speechless hearing a lecture about the effects of sanctions in Iraq.  I sat down on the floor of the room with my head in my hands, mumbling to myself, “They won’t let us get away with this forever.  They’re gonna’ get us for this.” And, no, (in response to the Righties in the audience) I was not thinking that we as Americans *deserved* to be attacked and killed.  Only that retaliation was inevitable, and since the attackers could not get at Bush and Cheney, they would go after his proxies.  His proxies, for better or worse, are what we are perceived to be. 

    I’m sorry that I wasn’t in the right online circles to have seen Churchill’s comments in their entirety before the whole furor errupted.  With everyone spinning it in different directions now, I freely admit that I have no clue what to think of him.

    Posted by alsis38 (from Portland, OR) from  on  02/06  at  12:30 PM

  27. To say that “talk radio” produced a psycho like Tim McVeigh misses the point.  Tim learned his skills in the Gulf War.  He learned the term “collateral damage” which is how he referred to kids killed in the horrible Murrah centre bombing - from the Gulf War.  I suggest very much - I think its online but its also in his book “Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace” about Gore Vidal’s letter exchange with McVeigh.

    I’m no fan of right wing fascist talk radio, but to assert that there is a direct causal relationship there is a stretch.

    Posted by j cummings from Canada  on  02/06  at  02:15 PM

  28. @ #7 - Have you ever read Fanon’s “Wretched of the Earth”? I happily recommend that you check it out, if for no other reason than to challenge your own point of view in a differing (but clearly relevant) historical context. To you, and the others who decry the use of violence of some to resist their oppression: Do you not see the authoritarian (and, depending on the context, racist) implications of telling others how they can and cannot resist their own oppression? Proscriptions of the “ought” variety reveal a reliance on ahistorical universalizing moralism, e.g. pacifism, that serve to disempower those whose lives/safety you are trying to ‘protect’ with your denunciation of violence as always illegitimate. Revolutionary violence is a tactical/strategic discussion for those in life-or-death conditions of existence, and the moral dimension (if indeed there is one) is eschewed in favor of ethical considerations based on situationally specific circumstances (in other words, reality).

    Posted by Synesthesia from Seattle  on  02/06  at  03:10 PM

  29. ***To say that talk radio produced a psycho like Tim McVeigh misses the point.***

    I never said that it solely, or literally produced McVeigh.  An environment in which Americans are steeped in anti-government rhetoric is bound to be a friendly medium in which to grow the seeds of hostility that already exist.  That was my point.

    Also, please note that I never said Churchill deserves the shit that’s being heaped on his head right now.  Only that certain parellels in my own experience make me somewhat twitchy about his delivery.  There’s a difference.

    ***I’m no fan of right wing fascist talk radio, but to assert that there is a direct causal relationship there is a stretch.***

    Why ?  I’m not trying to be rude, and I realize that you folks don’t know me from Eve, but if advertising can nuture and inspire certain types of behavior, why not the post-Reagan Rush-Gingrich-O’Reilly “axis,” which routinely “sells” to Americans the notion that government --in any and all manifestations-- is their enemy ?

    Posted by alsis38 (from Portland, OR) from  on  02/06  at  03:26 PM

  30. Syn, if your comments were adressed to me, I don’t know why.  While I am anti-war, I don’t advocate pacifisim in any and all circumstances.  Nor was I trying to imply that Churchill should have done so.

    Posted by alsis38 (from Portland, OR) from  on  02/06  at  03:32 PM

  31. The current inquisition aimed at Ward Churchill reminds me of the words of Martin Niemoeller:

    First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out--
    because I was not a communist;
    Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out--
    because I was not a socialist;
    Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out--
    because I was not a trade unionist;
    Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
    because I was not a Jew;
    Then they came for me--
    and there was no one left to speak out for me.
    (http://tinyurl.com/8ibb)

    Those on the Left who work as surrogates for the System by joining the State’s army arrayed against Ward Churchill should be ashamed and excoriated.

    They are apparently offended and outraged by freedom of speech and expression.

    I’m infinitely more offended and outraged by the death, destruction, crimes, and theft, the “United States”—an empire unto itself—has wrought domestically and internationally.

    Ward Churchill speaks to this incongruity and brutality with uncompromising and unflinching rhetoric.

    For that I thank him.

    That doesn’t mean I don’t have disagreements with or ambivalence about some of his thinking but disagreements and ambivalence do not legitimize persecution. Neither does inflammatory rhetoric.

    I find much of his heart and mind on the subject of nine-eleven to be more or less consistent with my own.

    Such things seem to me inevitable and in accordance with a kind of sociocultural physics known as Blowback.

    Ward Churchill says some things which many of us think and feel but will not say in public or share with friends. We know the potential costs of speaking one’s mind and revealing one’s heart.

    The inquisition in full bloom against Ward Churchill, Shahid Alam (http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn02052005.html), and others (http://kurtnimmo.com/blog/index.php?p=536) can not only happen to professors, personalities, celebrities, intellectuals, provocateurs, activists, etc.—it can happen to each and every one of us regardless of our relative position to power and those-in-the-know.

    As America travels pell-mell down the theocratic fascist path this sobering reality is made clearer with each passing day.

    The threats are real and we are all potential targets. We must protect and support our individual and collective rights to dissent and disagree to the best of our abilities.

    Don’t let any of this stop you from enjoying that great capitalist pastime in which blue collar athletes with their white collar salaries and union protections play ball with a pig-skin made out of cow leather in an ugly and devolved commercial spectacle known as the super brawl.

    The winner will be world champion after all.

    Posted by David Emanuel from Yonkers, NY  on  02/06  at  04:38 PM

  32. The problem here is that Mr Churchill has not been forthcoming about his background.  For example, he worked as an intelligence agent (Public Info Specialist) in Vietnam:
    http://www.aimovement.org/csi/Churchill/churchill_resume_80.jpg

    Then he worked for Soldier of Fortune Magazine, which has always been linked to the CIA. In fact, SOF’s from the 1980’s are no longer available in any library near Washington DC, including the Library of Congress, probably because everyone connected with it would be burned.

    Then he had some nebulous relationship with the CIA in relation to the contras, as Ken Lawrence writes (below). Then he formed an anti-AIM splinter group which accuses the leadership of murder, etc.

    Churchill is also accused of sabotaging AIM’s negotiations with Saddam Hussein - a related document is BBrown_Rmeans memo at http://www.aimovement.org/csi/index.html

    If Ward Churchill were more forthcoming about his background, then he would have more credibility. The media won’t touch this with a ten foot pole.

    Who cares what he wrote and whether you agree with it. The media’s clueless as ever, as are Ward’s new fans.  All this has been known for a long time.

    Next Read this:

    http://colorado.indymedia.org/newswire/display/10141/index.php

    Ward Churchill, the Contras, Elliott Abrams and Soldier of Fortune

    Posted by Paul Wolf from Washington DC  on  02/06  at  06:33 PM

  33. To alsis - I agree about the anti-government material that produced McVeigh, I just argue that the straw that broke the camel’s back was being a soldier of empire in Iraq.  Who knows how many more McVeighs are being created?

    To Wolf-
    And on Churchill’s background - this is about principle.  If he was a spook, is a spook, so be it - the points he is making and the polarity he is producing is refreshing, to be frank, are important things.  I doubt that this is cointelpro, and if it is, well then the effect is the reverse.

    Posted by j cummings from Canada  on  02/06  at  09:28 PM

  34. #33 “..the points he is making and the polarity he is producing is refreshing, to be frank, are important things...”

    We might debate that, but of the three law professors I have read who have made comment on the free speech, fire or stay issue, all agree that just on the contents of his “Pushing Back” article he should not be fired. And that includes an otherwise very critical law prof from CU, Paul Campos.

    http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_02_00.shtml#1107524536

    http://instapundit.com/archives/020970.php

    To portray all his critics as universally demanding his firing is thus a little ... overheated?

    Posted by Mark from  on  02/06  at  10:43 PM

  35. What I meant by polarity is an issue like this separates wheat from chaff, in my mind.  I am glad that libertarian conservative lawyers are defending Churchill.  They are wheat.  The “Strausscons” as Kurt Nimmo calls them, are chaff.

    Posted by j cummings from Canada  on  02/06  at  10:51 PM

  36. Thanks for the clarification, jcummings.  I don’t think we’re really arguing.  At least I hope not, because I just got here. (I’d made a mental note back in November to check this place out after someome -Paladin ?- mentioned it on Portland Indymedia.  Then all hell broke loose with my personal life, and I forgot about it until now.)

    Posted by alsis38 (from Portland, OR) from  on  02/06  at  10:55 PM

  37. Scott Big Bee - which CD are you talking about?
    cummings: all Featured ARticles on GNN are submitted to us and are rights cleared. the Headlines section are articles from other sources submitted by our users.
    our film about Iraq is balanced, in that we are not trying shove our ideology down your throut - like michael moore.
    you can watch the trailer here: http://www.gnn.tv/videos/video.php?id=20

    Posted by anthony_lappe from  on  02/07  at  11:27 AM

  38. Must be profitable.  As I said, you can republish my piece.

    Posted by j cummings from Canada  on  02/07  at  12:25 PM

  39. Here is the real quote from Ward Chuchill’s essay, not from some other books etc -

    Well, really. Let’s get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they [technocrats] were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America’s global financial empire - the “mighty engine of profit” to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved - and they did so both willingly and knowingly. Recourse to “ignorance” - a derivative, after all, of the word “ignore” - counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in - and in many cases excelling at - it was because of their absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I’d really be interested in hearing about it.”

    Please re-read Churchill’s own words and tell me what they mean ?

    Please reread Churchill’s own words - “If there was a BETTER, more EFFECTIVE, or in fact Any Other Way of VISITING SOME PENALTY Befitting Their Participation upon the Little EICHMANNS inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the Twin Towers, I’d REALYY be INTERESTED in HEARING ABOUT IT.”

    To me it says loud & clear - They (the WTC Inhabitants) deserved everthing they got !!!!

    Posted by Terry Michael from Dallas, Texas  on  02/07  at  04:37 PM

  40. http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/1998/1998-October/009552.html
    For Louis Proyect on Ward Churchill
    Apsken at aol.com Apsken at aol.com
    Mon Oct 26 15:06:24 PST 1998
    LBO-Talk Archives

    I confess to having thought that a political introduction was a courtesy in
    an unsolicited communication. I bear no responsibility for Louis’s post of my
    e-mail on this list, which he then attacked as though I had posted the
    information myself, and some others also have done. Inadvertently, I got under
    Louis’s skin. He professes to relish that as sport when he can inflict it on
    others, but turns nasty and irrational when it happens to him.
    Louis manages to see the clay feet on everyone else’s radical heroes, with
    which I concurred generally, and added a few points to his, in a private
    communication. But the purpose of my e-mail was to note for his benefit, in
    the event he had not been aware of it, that Ward Churchill, the hero of his
    own post, also has clay feet.
    I wrote as someone who had worked with Ward on a number of projects over a
    decade’s time, always cordially, though in later years our disagreements
    strained our ability to unite on the political field of struggle. Ward and I
    discussed and debated our differences at his home, his office, at public
    forums, and on the telephone. When I objected to Ward that his book on Marxism
    was a caricature, he replied that perhaps it was, but it reported on Marxists
    as he knew them.
    By the mid-1980s, Ward regarded CISPES as his main political enemy in Boulder
    and Denver. I was heavily involved in solidarity work with the FMLN, and
    sanctuary support, which included speaking/organizing engagements in Colorado.
    As far as I could tell, Ward’s hostility to the FMLN was derivative, because
    of its political alliance with Sandinista Nicaragua. To my knowledge, no
    indigenous Salvadorans were oppressed or politically mistreated by the FMLN or
    by any of its constituent parties.
    At about that time, Ward condemned the American Indian Movement leadership --
    specifically Bill Means and Vernon Bellecourt by name—as stooges of the
    left (his words, not mine).
    .

    Ken Lawrence

    Posted by Michael Pugliese from  on  02/09  at  12:39 AM
    41. Commenting is not available in this weblog entry. {/if}

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